A variety of methods have been employed to decipher magmatic systems, including geophysical, petrological, textural and geochemical approaches, and these elucidate a large variety of characteristics of different plumbing systems and magmatic differentiation processes. A common theme to the papers presented in this book is the observation of transport of small volume magma batches with a relatively high frequency, as opposed to less frequent transport of larger magma volumes that would require storage in large crustal reservoirs for long periods of time. The implications of this observation are discussed in the context of a possible tectonic control on crustal magma dynamics. <...>

Plate tectonics is the unifying theory of the solid Earth that describes the surface of our planet as being fragmented into rigid plates that move in relation to each other. Many fundamental geological processes, such as earthquakes, volcanism, and the formation of mountains, occur at the plates’ boundaries. In its initial formulation, plate tectonics was a kinematic theory that described and quantified these movements and associated deformation. Plate tectonics evolved into a dynamic theory, describing the forces driving the surface deformation and the internal dynamics of our planet. We also came to realize that plate tectonics is only one of the possible tectono-magmatic styles in which a planet can operate and that these can change over time. In the past years, the geosciences community has started to develop a theory that integrates plate tectonics and mantle convection as part of a single system. This was possible because of the ever-increasing high-quality imaging of Earth’s interior and our computational capabilities. But while the progress has been enormous, there are still many uncertainties and challenges ahead. <...>

Crinoids are widespread in the Upper Carboniferous deposits of the central European Russia, being an important element of the benthic communities; nevertheless, they are extremely poorly understood. Better studied are the Middle-Late Carboniferous crinoids of this region. Nevertheless, their sampled remains are only partially described; the number of species and genera to be described is approximately the same as the number of previously described taxa; and the discovery of many new forms is not inconceivable. Such poor knowledge of these fossils is attributable to the very limited number of specialists, insufficient state of collections, and poor study of sampled remains. In the former USSR, the last four decades were marked by an enhanced interest to columns of extinct crinoids because they are most widespread amid crinoid remains. Nevertheless, they are almost completely ignored in the last years. Moreover, the researchers who studied columns of Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, and, partly, Early Carboniferous crinoids did not pay attention to the Carboniferous deposits of the Russian Platform. <...>

The guy on the other end of the phone was offering me a job! A British government funded contract to work in the Geological Survey of Sierra Leone. As a fresh graduate this was an exciting prospect – a whole unexplored Archaean craton at my feet. The next three and a half years were an exciting time. It was the early 1970s when important new discoveries were being made in Archaean rocks in South Africa and the novel ideas of plate tectonics were still being newly applied to early Earth history. My position as a survey geologist provided me with the opportunity to map several greenstone belts and what seemed like an endless tract of granite gneisses and at the same time apply these new ideas in what appeared to be virgin territory. These were ‘formative’ years which cemented my fascination with the Archaean, an absorption which has remained with me over subsequent decades. <...>